Obama had to show ID before voting in Chicago last week

The Obama administration, in particular the Department of Justice, which has sued any number of states against using a method of identification to reduce voter fraud, using one excuse after another, was asked for his ID by a poll worker when he early voted last week in Chicago.

The poll worker was just following Illinois law on early voting which requires an ID to be shown before being allowed to vote – how fitting it was Obama.

Excerpt:

If Team O is eager to boost turnout by having its supporters vote early, and yet Illinois makes that impossible for the apparently many Democrats who don’t have ID, why didn’t Obama say something about the law today?

I give the poll worker credit for having the guts to follow the law despite WHO she was asking to prove his identity. You got my vote, lady!

I’m sure someone in the IRS has been appointed to go thru all his tax records and found he made a lot of money. Romney pays 57.9% of his income in taxes and charity. Find me any liberal anywhere that does that!

They know Obama won’t vote more than once, so it was a token photo op to check his ID and i’m sure they all laughed about it.

Why is this a story? Voter fraud is statistically non-existent, as has been shown time and time again over the last several years in story after story. But, using “voter fraud” as a tool to intimidate the poor and minorities and other people unliked by the GOP into not registering to vote or not actually voting is working very well.

The right’s big problem with Obama is that as a lawyer he represented ACORN in the Illinois Motor Voter case in the 90s. You can register to vote at a DMV where you get IDs anyway because of Obama and ACORN. The right’s big push to make ACORN into a boogeyman involves discrediting the idea that Obama was both legally eligible to be president and won fairly.

Shawn – The problem with ACORN was the fraudlant voter registration forms they compiled and then filed. During Obama’s days as Community Agitator, ACORN and Obama would harass banks to make mortgage loans to minority lenders. Banks would make these loans so as not to be labled racist and some of these loans would go to unqualified buyers…. and we see where there got us.

For example, Obama’s application to Punahou School – now mysteriously missing – would likely contain a birth certificate. And according to attorney Gary Kreep, “his Occidental College records are important as they may show he attended there as a foreign exchange student.” Indeed, Obama used his Indonesian name “Barry Soetoro” while attending
Occidental. Kreep has filed lawsuits challenging Obama’s eligibility to be president and as part of his lawsuit he requested Obama’s records from Occidental. However, Obama’s lawyers quickly moved to stop Occidental from honoring this request.

From the ACORN Wikipedia article:
“Throughout the election season, supporters of Republican candidates portrayed ACORN’s submission of invalid voter registration applications as widespread vote fraud. In October 2008, the campaign for Republican presidential candidate John McCain released a Web-based advertisement claiming ACORN was responsible for “massive voter fraud,” a point that Sen. McCain repeated in the final presidential debate. Factcheck.org called this claim “breathtakingly inaccurate,” but acknowledged that ACORN had problems with phony registrations.[78] The ads also claimed that home loan programs ACORN promoted were partly responsible for the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Newsweek and Factcheck.org also found these claims to be exaggerated and inaccurate.[79]”

“The Obama administration, in particular the Department of Justice, which has sued any number of states against using a method of identification to reduce voter fraud, using one excuse after another…”

Let’s look at what you consider “excuses”, shall we?

The Pennsylvania voter ID law has been enjoined because the judge was “not still convinced in my predictive judgment that there will be no voter disenfranchisement arising out of the Commonwealth’s implementation of a voter identification requirement for purposes of the upcoming election.”

In Texas, which enacted the most stringent voter ID law, the federal court ruled:

“Significantly, these burdens will fall most heavily on the poor. Like any fixed cost, the $22 (minimum) EIC applicants will have to pay to obtain prerequisite documentation weighs disproportionately on those living in poverty. Moreover, while a 200 to 250 mile trip to and from a DPS office would be a heavy burden for any prospective voter, such a journey would be especially daunting for the working poor. Poorer citizens, especially those working for hourly wages, will likely be less able to take time off work to travel to a DPS office—a problem exacerbated by the fact that wait times in DPS offices can be as long as three hours during busy months of the year. US Ex. 10 at 1. This concern is especially serious given that none of Texas’s
48 DPS offices are open on weekends or past 6:00 PM, eliminating for many working people the option of obtaining an EIC on their own time. See U.S. Ex. 361. A law that forces poorer citizens to choose between their wages and their franchise unquestionably denies or abridges their right to vote. The same is true when a law imposes an implicit fee for the privilege of casting a ballot, like the $22 many would-be voters who lack the required underlying documentation will have to pay to obtain an EIC. “[W]ealth or fee paying has . . . no relation to voting qualifications; the right to vote is too precious, too fundamental to be so burdened or conditioned.” Harper, 383 U.S. at 670.

“To be sure, a section 5 case cannot turn on wealth alone. In Texas, however, the poor are disproportionately racial minorities. According to undisputed U.S. Census data, the poverty rate in Texas is 25.8% for Hispanics and 23.3% for African Americans, compared to just 8.8% for whites. Mot. to take Judicial Notice of Census Data, ECF No. 219 Ex. 4 at 7, 16. This means that the burdens of obtaining an EIC will almost certainly fall more heavily on minorities, a concern well recognized by those who work in minority communities. Lydia Camarillo, a Texas voter education specialist who has worked for over 35 years in the Hispanic community, testified that because “Latinos are often among the working poor[,] . . . Latinos struggling to afford groceries, rent, and child care may not be able to afford . . . a copy of a birth certificate in order to get a voter ID.” Defendant-Intervenors Ex. 9 at 224. Moreover, Camarillo testified, “[f]or working class Latinos, the requirement of travelling to the DPS during regular business hours may prevent them from obtaining ID because their work hours are not flexible.” Id.

“To sum everything up: section 5 prohibits covered states from implementing voting laws that will have a retrogressive effect on racial minorities. See Beer, 425 U.S. at 141. Texas, seeking to implement its voter ID law, bears the burden of proof and must therefore show that SB 14 lacks retrogressive effect. Georgia, 411 U.S. at 538. But as we have found, everything Texas has submitted as affirmative evidence is unpersuasive, invalid, or both. Moreover, uncontested record evidence conclusively shows that the implicit costs of obtaining SB 14-qualifying ID will fall most heavily on the poor and that a disproportionately high percentage of African Americans and Hispanics in Texas live in poverty.”

Voter ID laws address voter impersonation fraud, not voter registration fraud, which has seldom been demonstrated. These ID laws have been found by courts to disenfranchise minorities and the poor. Ted, by calling these reasons “excuses” for enjoining laws that would disenfranchise blocs of voters, it does appear that you simply do not want minorities or the poor to be able to vote. This is not surprising since you have already said that you do not take our Constitution seriously.

Adam, no one will be denied their vote because of not being able to get an ID – only those who can’t obtain one legally. Most of the people you described don’t seem to have a problem getting their government benefits when they need to and your excuses are just that – excuses to ensure that more Democrats like you get to vote regardless of meeting state qualifications.

Many of the states are giving the ID’s out for no cost – so your emotional appeal that people can’t afford them is not only an excuse, it is a lie!

The only real excuse is that most of these laws didn’t give those without an ID time to obtain one – how do you exist in this society without one? – and that’s why these judges have temporarily stopped the laws. The laws will eventually be found constitutional because the states determine their voter requirements, not Washington.

Ted, you must agree that nothing in my prior post is my “emotional appeal”; rather, everything in that post was quoted directly out of court rulings. Further, you must acknowledge that what you called “excuses”, federal judges call reasons to strike these laws down. That’s not what
“excuse” means, is it?

Ted, I see that you have been online to post a new entry and comment on others, so I presume that you have had opportunity to respond here but have chosen not to because your statements are simply indefensible.